RUANG SUARA – meaning “Soundscapes” in English – brings together young composers and musicians from Indonesia with Frankfurt’s Ensemble Modern, one of the world’s leading soloist ensembles for contemporary classical music.

Together they experimented with Western and Indonesian instruments, exchanging views about different notations, tuning systems and musical concepts. Eight selected Indonesian composers were subsequently invited to a workshop in Frankfurt in January 2015 and commissioned to produce pieces specifically for Ensemble Modern, which were premiered at the Frankfurt LAB, launching the “Indonesia LAB”. The compositions are currently presented in Indonesia (Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Bandung) as part of the “German Season” in early December 2015.

RUANG SUARA is a joint project of Ensemble Modern, KfW Stiftung and Goethe-Institut Indonesia and is supported by the cultural foundation Kulturstiftung des Bundes. Please have a look at the trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux4DpLL2oKQ) and get an idea of these joint workshops between Indonesian composers and musicians with the members of Ensemble Modern.

Join a talk with Gatot Danar Sulistyanto and Michael Asmara on Tuesday, 8 December 2015 at 7 pm. They will give insights into the development, the creative process and intercultural challenges of this program about the selection criteria and how the participants managed to built one piece of art with their various artistic approaches and different backgrounds, experiences and types of education. How they worked with their own tradition in a lively exchange between other composers and performers, in which complex contexts are created that transcend cultural and artistic boundaries: a multi-cultural dialogue of art forms in which music is the host.

Gatot Danar Sulistiyanto is one of the selected young composers. He studied music at ISI majoring classical guitar and musicology. In 2001, he started music composition, happening art and performing art, and also theater. He joined “Music Teatrica Nova”, a group for multimedia arts, with Vincent McDermott, Hadi Susanto, Royke B. Koapaha (composers) and Agung Gunawan (choreographer). He attended several international workshop on composition for example: Electronic Music Workshop by Prof. Wilfried Jentzsch (Hochschule für Musik “Carl Maria von Weber” Dresden Studio fur Elektronische Musik-Austria). Gatot is interested in new types of sound and the body language of musicians plays a major role in his works.

For this project Michael Asmara was a consultant, he recommended young Indonesian composers and guided them. Michael Asmara himself is an Indonesian leading contemporary music composer from Yogyakarta. He studied harmony, counterpoint, music analyses and composition by self thought. Asmara has written a range of compositions music for both Western instruments and Javanese Gamelan. Many of his music has been performed in the US, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Thailand, Turk, Singapore and Malaysia. He founded the Yogyakarta Contemporary Music Festival in 2003 and has served as its director since 2003. He is also the artistic director and manager of Yogyakarta Contemporary Music Ensemble.

This program is the sixth event of German Season/Encounters – a series of discussions presented at Cemeti Art House.

The German Season is an initiative of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairsheld from September to December 2015 in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Indonesien, the German Embassy in Jakarta and the German-Indonesian Chamber of Industry and Commerce (EKONID) in major cities all over Indonesia.

At Cemeti Art House / Rumah Seni Cemeti

Jl. D.I. Panjaitan 41, Yogyakarta

For more information please click: germanseason.com